Can't Fight Fate
by badriddance
Summary: When your enemies are the only ones you can talk to. The Comedian's visit to Moloch, with angst over the incident with Sally. Requested on the kinkmeme


From a prompt asking for Eddie angsting and self-loathing about Sally.

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"All right," Jacobi sighed. He was still terrified, but he couldn't stand just laying there anymore. He sat up, struggling free from his blankets and hissing at the pain in his back. Blake sniffled a little and narrowed his red eyes.

"Show me your hand," Jacobi said , holding out his own. Blake looked from it to the haggard face and scowled through his tears. "Your hand," Jacobi insisted. "You're upset. I don't have answers. I don't use the cards anymore and the whole crystal ball thing is a crock. Let me see your palm."

"You can't be serious," Blake said, even as he allowed his fingerless glove to be unceremoniously tugged off. "You believe your own shit?"

"As much as I believe yours," Jacobi said. He went on before Blake could speak again. "All right, look. Here's your problem. You've got a zigzag." He pointed at a line across Blake's palm. The big man looked, despite himself. Jacobi was pointing at a faint line that had been dominated by a deeper crease. It did look like a zigzag, jumping its track to plow into another line down the center of his hand.

"This is your life line," Jacobi said pointing to the faint one. He traced it down to the zigzag. "Something happened here to derail it into your fate line. This is where you were supposed to go, but you did something that changed your fate. That's what brought you here." He tapped the spot the zigzag met the fate line and looked up, expecting a sneer or a punch.

Blake did neither. He was blank, staring at his palm. The zigzag could be an S, he thought hazily. He had done something to change the way things should've been. He was used to that. He had redirected history often enough, usually from behind a gun. This was his own history though. This was personal. He had done something to alter it. He had done something so bad it had twisted his own fate. He remembered the room and the smell of her, and the crack of bones and the spatter of blood. He had done that.

And Jacobi knew that. Hell, everyone knew that, thanks to the boy scout and his damn book. Con man to the end.

"Give me one good reason not to put a bullet through your mystical third eye bullshit," he said, still not looking up.

"Waste of a bullet," Jacobi said, with a breathless little laugh. He looked old and defeated and frightened, and resigned to all three.

"Got that right," Blake chuckled miserably, then turned mocking. "Any way to get my zigzag back on track?" Jacobi's mouth quirked and he nodded to the Bible on the nightstand.

"It worked for me," he said, trying to smile. Blake did laugh at that, but it was a still a dark, unhappy sound, like a lonely hyena. He left, barely remembering to put his mask back on before anyone saw him.

He didn't believe in fate. How many times had he himself changed the course of history? If there was a fate wouldn't it have stopped him somehow? Wouldn't something have deflected those bullets? Wouldn't something have stopped him from hitting her? _(the sweet waft of perfume completely out of place with the look of shock, the twist of pain, that splash of red across her face)_ If he had been meant to be with her, if she was supposed to have been his, wouldn't something have made that happen? Something would've made her say 'yes' or at least 'later' and something would've kept him from lashing out, stopped him from hurting her.

Nothing had. Fate was bullshit. Moloch's whole palm-reading stunt was bullshit. There wasn't anything out there to guide people, no greater destiny to carry them to where they were supposed to be. There was no 'supposed to'. There was nothing out there and no way around it but to bulldoze straight through. You could either take what you could or _be struck down and bent over while someone stronger, probably someone you might've halfway trusted, ground your face into the table._

He stopped walking, his stomach lurching. He leaned against a wall. He was drunk, too drunk to be out in uniform. The weight of the things he knew, swirling with the booze, and Moloch's stupid power of suggestion wasn't helping.

She had looked over his shoulder at him. He had seen his own heartless grin reflected in her wide, prey-animal eyes, but hadn't remembered it until much later. Her face, smashed and bloody, and the heartbroken glow going out in the eyes under his own leering, laughing reflection. His stomach clenched hard, bending him over. He refocused on his hand, clinging to the brick wall.

He looked at his fist. There were lines across his knuckles too. They had been filled with blood and lipstick, outlining them in red. He opened it to look like at his palm again. The zigzag _(the S?)_ passed by over the former life line one more time before it careened off into the fate line. Like a second chance. Like that afternoon, when things had gone right. If there had ever been a time he might've believed in fate, it would've been that day.

The truth was that he didn't deserve her anymore, not since that first zig. He had lost any right to be destined for her. Didn't matter anymore, he told himself, shuffling on. Even with the side trip, his life line had taken, it wasn't that long. Whether the bombs fell or Veidt pulled off his mass destruction, the end was coming soon enough.


End file.
